Friday, June 5, 2015

DOCTOR MY EYES

My present doc wants me to go under the knife for my glaucoma....soon. It's very advanced and if it progresses beyond the point of no return I could be blind before I hit 70. I see fine. Glaucoma is one of those diseases with no symptoms. If I didn't go to the eye doc once a month I'd never know just how bad it all is. Not one to take any one's word on this shit, I sought out a second opinion. In this case the second doc concurred. He took pics and traced a large white area in the center of each eye. "See this? The white is all the damage. Much more and it will be irreparable." So much for avoiding a man in white sticking sharp objects in my eyes. Now how the fuck do I pay for this adventure?
Turns out, like deer, insurance has a season. It runs from November to Feb. Get sick out of season? Good luck. So this is my plan: dive into Obama Care in November, sched. one eye for Jan. and the other for June. This allows me deer and turkey season (the LGM willing and the knife don't slip). What this has done is put all my "market envy" and discouragement over not being able to show my work, into some sort of perspective. Plus as a conceptualist, say I do go blind, I can use it to my advantage and show these assholes, I can still do the work sightless. The internet loves a hard luck story. I can see it, (well not really see it)- Old, blind, visual artist discovered in Catskills. Prices soaring. It could be just the ticket.

But before all this takes place, I have to finish the kitchen (while I still can see) and try to make it to Nov. Yesterday Savage called to invite me over to Paradise Pond for drinks and steaks. He and his brother Milawyer and a few others had been golfing all day. My brother Mupp and I were the only non-duffers allowed. The booze flowed, the pipe came out, the steaks and wild mushrooms were fried up and as we all sat at the table, telling war stories and laughing, one member of the crew I'll call "Cougar" laughed loudly, leaned against his neighbor, and then slid under the table like a wet noodle. We all sat there shell-shocked, until we realized he had passed out cold. The table was pulled aside, as we rushed to his side. He came to, only to pass out again and then projectile vomit all over himself and the room.
Milawyer may be a Dr. of jurist prudence, but his immediate diagnosis was to get poor Cougar to his feet and away from the furniture. 40 years ago we would've drug him into some pick up bed and continued the party. This was not going to happen. We weren't that cold anymore. Put a bunch of hard drinking men in their 60's in a room and it could be anything: stroke, heart attack, poison mushroom, or more likely, too much sun, booze, and and a susceptibility to good pot. Eventually someone got a bucket. As of this morning Cougar was upright, off on a business trip, no worse for the wear. Phew! Gotta say, we're still making memories.